Help Finish Orson Welles’ Final Film, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

Poor Orson Welles. His career began with one of the most important films of all-time, and the rest was an ongoing struggle. For his final picture, The Other Side of the Wind, Welles managed to finish shooting, but a variety of obstacles prevented the film from being completed. The plot, which stars John Huston as J.J. “Jake” Hannaford, is a semi-autobiographical piece about a director struggling to re-define his career and make a comeback.

Following Welles’ death, there were three decades of legal battles over the film, and in 2014, the rights finally landed in the hands of producers Filip Jan Rymsza, Frank Marshall, and Jens Koethner Kaul. And they want to finish what Welles started.

Image via Indiegogo

An Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign has begun to help complete the movie. As the campaigners write: “What if Mark Twain lost a manuscript – Or if Mozart lost his sheet music for a final Sonata? – Or a lost book of poems by Walt Whitman was discovered hidden away in a dusty attic?”

This movie can help us better understand Welles’ cinematic legacy, and moreover, the simple act of completing it through crowdfunding will make film history.

The Indiegogo page goes in depth about the production’s history and the importance of completing the movie, and like pretty much all crowdfunding campaigns, there are rewards depending on how much you donate. And if you donate at the top level of $50,000, you’re going to get something really special. You will receive Welles’ scrapbook where he kept newspaper clippings of all of his films going back to the 1930s. So, if you’re one of our wealthier readers, want to make film history and get some history back, this is a worthy cause.

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